Best Diablo 4 Blood Lance Necromancer build in Season 5

The Necromancer is high in the meta in Season 5 of Diablo 4 and the Blood Lance build is a powerful minion-free setup that sees the class do major damage to enemies from a distance.

The Blood Lance Necro build involves the Necromancer using this gruesome move as their primary offensive weapon while utilizing other skills and gear that boost its power. This Necromancer build is ranked as A-tier in the current endgame meta, so it’s a great choice for those fond of the Priests of Rathma, especially anyone who wants to use a powerful Necro build, but without using summons.

Below, we’ll detail how to optimize the build for leveling and endgame, giving you the best skills, items, Aspects, and Glyphs to target on your journey. For the PvP players out there, we’ll also inform you if we think the Bone Spear Necro is effective this season.

Best Blood Lance leveling build in Diablo 4 Season 5

As you level while playing through either the campaign or the new Season 5 content, you’ll want to make sure that you’re selecting your skills in the following order:

Level	Skill
1	Reap
2	Decompose
3	Bone Lance
4	Bone Lance
5	Enhanced Bone Lance
6	Supernatural Bone Lance
7	Bone Lance
8	Bone Lance
9	Bone Lance
10	Blood Mist
11	Unliving Energy
12	Imperfectly Balanced
13	Imperfectly Balanced
14	Imperfectly Balanced
15	Hewed Flesh
16	Hewed Flesh
17	Hewed Flesh
18	Corpse Explosion
19	Fueled by Death
20	Fueled by Death
21	Fueled by Death
22	Grim Harvest
23	Decreptify
24	Enhanced Decreptify
25	Abhorrent Decreptify
26	Decreptify
27	Decreptify
28	Decreptify
29	Decreptify
30	Death’s Approach
31	Death’s Approach
32	Death’s Approach
33	Corpse Tendrils
34	Enhanced Corpse Tendrils
35	Plagued Corpse Tendrils
36	Grusome Mending
37	Coalesced Blood
38	Coalesced Blood
39	Coalesced Blood
40	Tides of Blood
41	Tides of Blood
42	Tides of Blood
43	Rathma’s Vigor
44	Rapid Ossification
45	Rapid Ossification
46	Rapid Ossification
47	Bone Storm
48	Enhanced Bone Storm
49	Supreme Bone Storm
Renown 1	Serration
Renown 2	Stand Alone
Renown 3	Stand Alone
Renown 4	Stand Alone
Renown 5	Mememto Mori
Renown 6	Mememto Mori
Renown 7	Mememto Mori
Renown 8	Serration
Renown 9	Serration
Renown 10	Gruesome Mending

These skills will help you to craft the ideal Blood Lance build. Of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Renown points to use the extra ten. Once you do though, focus on adding the above solo Necro passives to give your character a boost heading into the endgame.

If you do want to use minions, switch out the Memento Mori and Stand Alone passives for Hellbent Commander and Inspiring Leader.

Best Book of the Dead setup for leveling

When it comes to using the Necromancer’s unique Book of the Dead skills for a Blood Lance build, we recommend selecting the following:

• Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
• Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
• Golems – Sacrifice

As you can see, we’ll not be using minions in battle for this build and instead will be Sacrificing them to make our Necromancer even more powerful. Of course, you can choose to use them, just know your build won’t be as individually powerful if you do.

Best leveling rotation

Here’s the best rotation of attacks you should use when approaching mobs of enemies:

• Decreptify
• Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Mist
• Bone Storm
• Blood Lance – Main Skill
• Corpse Explosion

When you approach a mob, hit them with Decreptify to put them on the backfoot. Now, cast Corpse Tendrils to stun enemies and increase the likelihood of producing extra corpses.

From here, hit them with your main attacks, using Blood Mist to do devastating damage from a distance once your minions engage the mob. Now you can use your two most effective skills, Bone Storm, and can begin firing volleys of Blood Lance into the fray.

By now, Corpse Tendrils will have worn off, so hit them with another round of it, maximizing your corpse generation, stunning the survivors, and even topping up their poison levels. As the bodies pile up, cast Corpse Explosion to wipe out the surviving enemies.

Best Legendary Aspects

While Legendary Aspects will become more useful in the endgame version of the Blood Lance build, there are some you can hunt down while progressing to level 50 or while playing through the story. Here’s where you can find them:

Aspect	Power	Dungeon	Region
Sacrificial	Boosts Sacrifice Minion buffs	Ruins of Eridu	Hawezar
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan
Blood Seeker’s	Boosts Blood Lance damage	Mercy’s Reach	Fractured Peaks

Best Blood Lance endgame build in Diablo 4 Season 5

Once you reach endgame in Season 5 by beating the story, hitting level 50, and unlocking the Paragon Board, you can then respec to the endgame version of the Blood Lance Necro build.

The good news is that for this endgame build, you’ll be keeping the exact same set-up you had for leveling. So there’s no need to respec, unless you want to add or remove minions.

Active Skill	Upgrades	Points allocated
Reap	–	1
Decompose	–	1
Blood Lance	Enhanced, Supernatural	5
Blood Mist	–	1
Decrepify	Enhanced, Abhorent	5
Corpse Explosion	–	1
Corpse Tendrils	Enhanced, Plagued	1
Bone Storm	Enhanced, Supreme	1

Here’s which Passive Skills you should choose:

Passive Skill	Points
Unliving Energy	1
Hewed Flesh	3
Grim Harvest	1
Fueled by Death	3
Imperfectly Balanced	3
Amplify Damage	3
Death’s Approach	3
Memento Mori	3
Serration	3
Coalesced Blood	3
Grusome Mending	2
Tides of Blood	3
Stand Alone	3
Rapid Ossification	3
Rathma’s Vigor	1

Best endgame Book of the Dead setup

Once again, we recommend Sacrificing your minions:

• Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
• Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
• Golems – Sacrifice

Of course, if you’d prefer to use minions, feel free, just know you’ll be less powerful as an individual Necromancer.

Best endgame rotation

For endgame, use the following skill rotation when approaching mobs in battle:

• Decreptify
• Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Mist
• Bone Storm
• Blood Lance – Main Skill
• Corpse Explosion

The rotation remains the same in endgame as it was for leveling. So see above for a detailed breakdown.

Best Legendary Aspects

Now that you’ve reached endgame, you’ll have access to many more Legendary Aspects to boost your build and add special powers to buff your primary skills. Some are the same as in the leveling build, but now there’s even more. Here’s where and how you can find them:

Aspect	Power	Dungeon	Region	Gamble Obols
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan	–
Blood Seekers	Boosts Blood Lance damage	Mercy’s Reach	Fractured Peaks	–
Sacrificial	Boosts Sacrifice minion buffs	Ruins of Eridu	Hawezar	–
Great Feast	Increased minion damage	–	–	Focus
Gore Quills	Blood Lance has a chance to spawn Blood Orbs	–	–	Focus
Shielding Storm	Bone Storm generates Barrier	–	–	Pants
Hardened Bones	You and your minions get damage reduction	–	–	Pants
Metamorphosis	Evade triggers Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds	–	–	Boots

Remember, you can also strip these Aspects from their original item and apply them to an item of your choosing.

Paragon Board

Once you reach level 50 you’ll stop earning skills points and start earning Paragon points instead. This leveling system works very differently and involves you selecting updates from various boards with different themes and buffs.

Every path is different, but the good news is that by targeting different Glyphs as you move around the Paragon Board, you’ll start buffing your Bone Spear Necro in the ways that matter most to the build.

See below to see which Glyphs you should target first.

Best Glyphs

Level 15

• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Dominate
• ‍Essence
• ‍Sacrificial
• ‍Amplify

Level 21

• ‍Essence
• ‍Dominate
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Amplify
• ‍Sacrificial

Once you reach Paragon Level 15, work your way towards the above Glyphs. You’ll also unlock more across the Paragon Board as you earn more points, but selecting these particular Glyphs in this order will keep you on the best possible path for the Blood Lance build.

Best Blood Lance endgame item build

Item	Socket	Item type	Power
Shadow Sin	Ruby for extra life	Helm	–
Runic Mail of Disobedience	2x Ruby for extra life	Chest Armor	Bone Storm has the chance to trigger Barrier
Shadow Guardian	–	Gloves	–
Heroic Rival	2x Ruby for extra life	Pants	–
Corpse Revenge	–	Boots	Increased Skeleton Priest damage
Imp End	Ruby for overpower damage	Main Hand	–
Wraith Voup	1x Ruby for overpower damage	Offhand	–
Blood Seeker’s Choker	Skull to boost armor	Amulet	Boosts Blood Lance damage
Ring of Potent Blood	Skull to boost armor	Ring 1	Boosts Blood Orbs
Sacrificial Ring	Skull to boost armor	Ring 2	Boosts Sacrifice damage

It’ll take time to track down this exact set, but once you do this will make up your endgame gear. Of course, it’s up to you which gear you equip and you may want to mix it up, but this setup will give you a decided advantage.

Alternative to Necromancer Blood Lance build for PvP

The good news about using the Necromancer Blood Lance build for PvP is that it’s the exact build we’ve described above in our endgame section. The build is rated A-tier for PvP this season, so while it’s not at the very top, it’s still deadly and a great choice for taking down other players.

Now that you know how to craft this top-tier Necromancer build, make sure to check out our guides for the Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue, and Barbarian.